


Amuse Me

by eva_cybele



Category: Greek and Roman Mythology
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-01-20
Updated: 2013-01-20
Packaged: 2017-11-26 05:32:04
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 617
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/647081
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/eva_cybele/pseuds/eva_cybele
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Persephone is inconsolable after being brought to the underworld, and Hades attempts to cheer her up. Written for a tumblr drabble meme prompt.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Amuse Me

Persephone was depressed, and Hades had no idea how to fix her. The goddess he had fallen in love with had been a beautiful, laughing maiden who loved playing with her companions – as his queen, he had envisioned her brightness magnified tenfold in the darkness of the underworld, not dimmed almost to nothingness.

 

She had remained in the rooms he had prepared for her – temporary rooms, of course, she would share his before too long – and refused to come out when he summoned her.

 

The situation was growing dire. Demeter was throwing a tantrum of epic proportions up on the surface, so no doubt Zeus would cave under the pressure soon and demand that Hades return his rightfully-stolen bride. He needed to have secured her place in the underworld before that happened, but how was he supposed to do that when the woman wouldn't so much as look at him?

 

What did maiden goddesses like, anyways?

 

Hades tried flowers, first. He ordered a few of his dead servants to go and pick bouquets of asphodels from the meadows, and sent them in with the meals that Persephone never touched. The maids reported that she'd taken one look at them and curled up on her bed, sobbing, for the rest of the evening.

 

Jewelry was next, as precious gems covered abounded in the underworld. Hades himself selected the finest that his miners brought him, and had rubies set into the eye sockets of a fine diamond skull pendant, the twin of the necklace he himself wore. That one he took to Persephone himself, only to have it flung rudely into his helmet of invisibility. It took three days to get the dent out.

 

He was lounging on his throne, at his complete wits' end – and still disgruntled about the helmet dent besides – when Hecate walked in with a basket of squirming, three-headed newborn hellhound pups. Though very soon they would be colossal and slavering, with many rows of deadly sharp teeth, they were still harmless as of yet. And perhaps, Hades thought, something that a goddess would like as a present? He remembered when he had been presented with Cerberus, when he'd taken over the underworld. It had been a good feeling, and the queen of the underworld should have her own hound. Perhaps it would make her feel as if she belonged.

 

Transferring a small, chesnut-colored bitch pup to her own basket, Hades had Hecate deliver the present to Persephone, making sure that she knew the present was from _him_ , no matter that Hecate was the hound-mistress of the underworld and had given him the idea in the first place.

 

A month later, Hades caught the two goddesses walking in the courtyard, the considerably-larger hellpup tight to Persephone's heels. The girl had deigned to leave her rooms, and was actually smiling! Hades felt like his plans were finally coming to fruition, and approached Persephone with a pomegranate and uncharacteristically sweet words organizing themselves in his mind.

 

Before he could manage to say anything, however, the bitch snarled and charged him, a hundred or so pounds of solid muscle landing squarely on his chest. Three heads bared teeth mere inches from his nose, and Hades was so shocked that anything in his kingdom would dare attack him that he just laid there and stared.

 

Lovely musical laughter, the likes he had not heard since last autumn, echoed off the stone walls and ceiling. Looking past the hellhound and his own wounded pride, Persephone stood laughing, her mouth curled up in a cruel grin, eyes flashing in defiance.

 

“Oh, Hades. If a queen of the underworld is what you wanted, that should have been what you expected to get.”


End file.
